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Part of the problem is that customer service staff know next to nothing about the business and therefore can only follow a set script. Companies should appoint their more articulate and knowledgeable workers as customer service staff. Fewer workers would be needed because their efficiency would be higher, and therefore they could be paid far more than the run-of-the-mill script reader.

Chris, you have hit the nail on the head! I teach a course called "Delight Your Customers," but even that is not enough. Most people don't want to give great service, and why should they? There is no incentive to do so, it is a little bit harder, customers are often ungrateful or apathetic, and most managers in SA are uninspiring at best, manipulative and cruel at worst.

You ask about the woeful state of service in SA, and cite two excellent reasons/examples. In my experience there are dozens of good reasons why we experience abysmal customer care, most related to poor leadership, some because employees don't, (and never will,) "get it," and some because we as customers keep supporting the businesses that let us down.

The ROI of effective customer management is phenomenal - but it does require some investment up front. I wish more CEOs would play a more active role in making it happen.

Key is to realise what you are losing if you don't invest in training and building a cohesive blueprint of operational support. Customers walk away in a tick if they are not supported. It is critical for the organisations to understand customer journeys and provide appropriate support at the relevant touchpoints.

Thanks Steve, sounds interesting. A mash of brandseye, fuseware and other sentiment data wrapped in a laymans dashboard, nice! Now a really interesting service would be to combine that with Effective Measure's demographic cookie data and panel traffic data. I'm no longer at EM but would be good to meet up, based in Durbs and contacted Mike S recently

The data includes public social data from all the top platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google+ etc.) and online news data from a variety of news monitoring services (custom feeds can be added). It also includes data associated with a clients access controlled accounts like Instagram and Facebook Pages.

The insight comes from enhancements to the data including sentiment, topic detection and identification of people, places, companies and industries. This is then aggregated and presented through visualisations that consider data, time frame, frequency and relationship to give answers to common questions such as 'What image do people have of our brand?', 'How are my competitors doing?' or 'Are we facing a crisis?'.

I trust this clears it up a bit. It would be great to chat further if you get a gap.

How depressing!Kiss good-bye to the artists, say hello to the techs....how sad.Years of observation from an artistic eye and years of experience still mean the difference between something instinctive to an artist and an "operator".Geez! Are we machines yet?

Only unfortunate thing about the PRISM Awards is the judging. Year-after-year the judges award and recognise all the campaigns of either big budget or bigger brand. 90% of the campaigns recognised practically sell themselves and have huge media interest from the on-set.Shouldn't the talent and true ability of the agencies be recognised that take on the challenging PR projects? Agencies that change whole economic sectors by taking on a challenge and turning it into a true PR success story?Judges.. it's about time you recognise PR skill and talent at it's very core - campaigns that test all attributes of the team and that is measured by it's ability to drive results through multiple disciplines.Stop awarding big brands and big budgets.. I mean seriously... 2 years ago.. campaign of the year.. Table Mountain? Yeah.. this worldly icon definitely needs all the PR it can get...??Get my drift?Be judges! Think macro and not only micro! Applaud true PR talent and dedication to the profession.

Eugene de Kock paid for his failures ! So we must some streets named after him for he paid the the price! Many thanks to all who make Freedom of expression possible when the love to protect ones great desires God help!let those privileged to #Freedom of expression not #Abuse it!

Thank you Sophie for the interview with Casson Media, we strive to help users gain an understanding when it comes to SEO or digital marketing.

Jean Pierre, to answer your question, when it comes to linkbuilding you should never see it as "linkbuilding". As Stuart states, it needs to natural, relevant and something you should not have to think about. I consider backlinking strategies to be "old fashioned" in most part because people try too hard to get links and do not focus quality content that the user wants to read. Your efforts should focus on the message you want to get across, if users like your content they will share it naturally. If you need to go out looking for links then you missed the point all together. I have never intentionally placed links anywhere on the web and all my clients sites rank the top in the country... keep it simple, keep it relevant and keep it interesting. If you have to think about it, you have thought too much. I hope this helps.

Absolutely agree with Dibeehi's article.In today's world, service is synonymous with cost efficiencies which ultimately result in disenfranchised customers. Why? Many service providers do not understand the fundamental differences between delivering 'customer service' which is often focussed on a repeatable rote service and creating service perceptions often tied to SLA metrics. Whereas on the other hand, a true 'customer experience' is memorable for the customer, making them 'feel good' which establishes confidence and trust in the customer to come back for more and even sing the praises of that organisation. They feel that the service provider 'gets it/them'. Whilst there maybe SLA targets, this is not the focus but rather a true understanding of the customer's needs, their business and developing a relationship of trust that ultimately creates confidence in the customer's experience of the service and a 'feel good' factor which results in referrals and wanting to come back for more.

In today’s very difficult economical situation in the country where most of the businesses have severe monetary issues . Due to the reason most of the companies like direct tribal lenders looking for financial assistance from a reliable sources with less interest rates.

It’s my Short experience. A friend of mine did the Detox and Cleanse diet and recommended it to me 3 weeks ago. This stuff is amazing! My best friend Jessica did the same diet and lost an incredible amount of weight. i couldn't believe it and had to do some research on my own which is how I found this news article. I can't believe they are offering bonus trials! I know Jessica spent something like $600 and was thrilled. Imagine how excited she would be if it cost her under $60.00. This is a godsend, thanks so much!!